Collection

Beautiful Flag (War Picture Returns)

AIDA, Makoto

1995

Information

Title
Beautiful Flag (War Picture Returns)
Artist
AIDA, Makoto View artist Information
Year
1995
Collection
Purchased
Medium
charcoal, self-made paint with Japanese glue, acrylic on paper (fusuma, sliding door), hinges ,**
Size
each 169.0×169.0

Commentary

This work is from the series War Picture Returns, which marked 50 years since the end of World War II, and the title references the War Record Paintings that Japanese artists produced during the Pacific conflict. Two women, from Japan and South Korea, stand facing one another with their national flags raised. As they occupy two separate halves of a folding screen (cheaply made from worn-out sliding doors connected with hinges), it is unclear whether they signify confrontation or dialogue. Does the rubble on the ground symbolize the state of Japan in the 1990s, including the collapse of the economic bubble and the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake? Aida, belonging to a generation that had not experienced the war, cited the changing atmosphere of the times after the death of the Showa-era Emperor Hirohito as one of his inspirations for this series, which he described as characterized by “a vacuum of meaning.”

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